Heckran forces the party to learn about Lavos, causing the cutscene. It's important to plot advancement, but some players might miss the town version. Probably beyond the scope of this hack, but theGreatBen should have the party react if they learn it in town first.

I'd go with the party calling him Magus. Frog might go with Fiendlord Magus.

Good points there. The town is setup so that it's completely optional, what with the fights and all. If the player gets fed up with being refused and leaves after eating the cake at the portal the plot still stands.

I like that video... but I need to hack it to make the text boxes less ugly.

That's a valid concern and I kinda anticipate similar hacks to come out for the same reason. I'm reading that some feel things like menu hacks for this feature would be more emulator-specific (for now this is only present on a beta BSNES build), but then again we could've said the same about MSU-1 for a little bit.

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Did I give you my HP to 1 Barrier/Shield fix? HP to 1 attacks disable the effect of Barrier/Shield for the remainder of the battle. I had a simple fix that changed this, but I later realized that the 6 Nu fight relies on this behavior. Three of the Nus in there reduce your HP to 1, but the other three do the minimum of 1 damage, unless you have Barrier/Shield up, which reduces it to 0. I'll have a more extensive patch later to address this, but for now leaving the bug alone seems like the best course of action.

You did give me the simple version, so this sounds like something I'll have to revert for now. That shouldn't be a problem for me at least!

I forget where I read it (maybe a cut line) that Heckran was appointed by Magus to guard the future site where Lavos would appear.

That's the first time I've heard that one! I think it might be a headcanon though, it's implied that there's more than just one Heckran in Cross, and the only mentions anywhere of the Heckran is as your regular boss. Heckran is one of the bosses Lavos assumes in it's "boss gauntlet" fight though.

Still plugging away, sometime this week I'll have a list of areas effected by this (in other words, the first run of 6 will be done). Oh, and while I'm surprised that I didn't need to do this more often given how much longer The Fiendlord is than a character name, I did have one case where I had to reconstruct a line in the King's Chamber for formatting:

The King fought bravely againstThe Fiendlord's troops.{full break}Had he not heard of the arrival of theHero, he might have fought to the death!{null}Another quick thing found, Lucca says Marle "ceases to exists." Taken care of! Also, the "maid" not being the chef's wife is finally taken into account... I was meaning to do that.

It's revealed in the Prerelease that Magus ordered Heckran to protect the spot over which Lavos sleeps.

That's very interesting, I wonder why they chose to remove this detail in the final release? There's one thing that I don't quite understand though. Why would Magus order Heckran to "protect the spot over which Lavos sleeps"? Was this some kind of back-up plan in case he either lost or failed to summon Lavos the first time (in the original Middle Ages timeline before Crono and party interfered)? Surely he didn't believe that some random person would just dig deep in that exact spot and accidentally awaken Lavos. And could Heckran really be over 400 years old? Mystics might have a longer lifespan than humans, but this just seems too much. I'm assuming that Magus can feel the dark energy of Lavos or something which is how he knew the exact spot where Lavos was in. Does this mean that Heckran's Cave in the Present time is where Magus' Castle was in the Middle Ages? Or could Magus summon Lavos without actually being directly underneath it? And lastly, would Heckran really choose to continue guarding the same spot for over 400 years after Magus was defeated and disappeared? If so, that's quite some level of dedication! Maybe Heckran was still hoping that Magus would return some day.

All this just doesn't quite make sense. Perhaps that's why this detail was removed before release? Or does anyone here have any ideas how all this could have been explained in the game?

« Last Edit: May 22, 2019, 05:19:40 am by Recca »

Logged

"Truly, if there is evil in this world, it lies within the heart of mankind."- Edward D. Morrison (Tales of Phantasia)

A) This was meant to be a sidequest, probably involving Magus in 600 AD. At least most Mystics don't have a longer lifespan, because of Ozzie's ancestor, so maybe the boss is merely from a long line of noble Heckrans? Maybe there's some overzealous Mystic who wanted to awaken Lavos themselves?

B) This is something for an ending. Like if you end either after defeating Magus or after obtaining Magus. But this was pre-release so I doubt it.

Either way the current Heckran does feel like it makes more sense in the current game.

Here's a list of maps of which the events needed to be edited for Magus>The Fiendlord. It's only for those using Temporal Flux due to only having the hex numbers. Unless you'd like to see how many I've had to go through (there are about four more added to my list of changes that aren't here, due to the need to update for the other spelling errors mentioned here). I figure it may be useful to someone.

Spoiler:

00501801F02402F03003A03E049 (realign the grave space)07207307407607807907B07C085 (use Fiends the second time on the line where his army is mentioned twice)087 (not Ozzie)08808908A09D09E0A4 (Magicians mention should also be Fiends)0C71D1 (wizards/Mystics>Fiends)

Also anything having to do with The Oath ending. This is very odd in it's scripting, so I just made sure to edit everything in The Oath's beginning map (159) and Magus's Inner Sanctum (0FD)

EDIT: Whoops, forgot some 0s.June 06, 2019, 01:50:19 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)All that's left for me to do is copy work (slow going), look into Liberties Extended stuff, and other small things. But one more note before release. I had about forgotten about North Cape.

There is a string that wasn't brought into the localization due to how Magus's name is played out. When you challenge him, he should be mentioning how he is The Magus. The interesting thing here is that during these lines, they are literal strings and don't use {Magus}. This is because they're able to use this as a title. So I decided to use this as a last reference, because the line can now be used correctly:

{Magus}: Very well then...{full break}But I'm also feared as The Fiendlord...You shall not defeat me easily!{null}This is very similar to how the DS's script restored this line's meaning using the same title, though it was under Magus's new script.

Here's a beta of version 7. All the text stuff is done for now, last to do with this patch outside of whatever's reported is to fix the checksums and revert the HP-to-1 fix (I wanted to do that all at once after the text).

Bugfixes:-Added a fix by Mauron that enables names smaller than the maximum amount of characters to be used without invisible spaces appearing after the name is used. In short you can now properly use shorter names, both in the name entry screen and CronoNick!

Equipment Names:BronzeFist>Karma Fist is for all patches now (ultimately this reads far better).

Chapter Names:Law of Earth!>Law of the Earth

Dialogue:-Magus is now The Fiendlord when talked about by humans in the present and middle ages, and Mystics are now Fiends. The exception to the human rule is the party, who is still required to call Magus by name due to plot events (but will still call the Mystics as Fiends when it pops up). The Heckran calls him by a hybrid of both for consistency's sake. -This also fixes the rest of the wizard mentions, and Choras’s legend once and for all.-The weird break in P.E. is gone.-"Ceases to exists" is now fixed.-Middle Ages’s Maid is now the cook’s wife.-Lofty Robo is now properly Holy Robo-The correct spelling for Polliwog is used.-awhile is now a while.-Magus’s Lavos Core dialog now uses the correct form of its.-Fixed the ending mentioning Kin instead of Kino.-Fixed the last of The Oath ending’s frog issues along with the above (at least I think so. This event’s scripting is kinda weird as it keeps repeating multiple times. I took them all on just in case).-Made the third line of Masa and Mune's speech string at Hero's Grave more descriptive, and not just one line.

Battle Messages:-Magus’s name is now used instead of just Magus (kinda weird, as names should be supported fine. This mostly has something to do with NG+ though.)-Scouter/Red Scout/Blue Scout: “fights” is now “counters,” quotes are removed. (Either way, elements aren’t quoted in any other battle message.)Please report any text overflows or Magus mentions still hanging around. So far these areas are untested:-Name fix (I can definitely confirm that it works and now uses code that's already in the ROM, but I haven't done a full run with it yet.)-The Oath ending.-Battle with Magus.

Dialog:-Magus is now The Fiendlord when talked about by humans in the present and middle ages, and Mystics are now Fiends. The exception to the human rule is the party, who is still required to call Magus by name due to plot events (but will still call the Mystics as Fiends when it pops up). The Heckran calls him by a hybrid of both for consistency's sake. -This also fixes the rest of the wizard mentions, and Choras’s legend once and for all.-The weird break in P.E. is gone.-"Ceases to exists" is now fixed.-Middle Ages’s Maid is now the cook’s wife.-Lofty Robo is now properly Holy Robo-The correct spelling for Polliwog is used.-awhile is now a while.-Magus’s Lavos Core dialog now uses the correct form of its.-Fixed the ending mentioning Kin instead of Kino.-Fixed the last of The Oath ending’s frog issues along with the above (at least I think so. This event’s scripting is kinda weird as it keeps repeating multiple times. I took them all on just in case).

Battle Messages:-Magus’s name is now used instead of just Magus (kinda weird, as names should be supported fine. This mostly has something to do with NG+ though.)-Scouter/Red Scout/Blue Scout: “fights” is now “counters,” quotes are removed. (Either way, elements aren’t quoted in any other battle message.)Please report any Magus mentions still hanging around. So far these areas are untested:-The Oath ending.-Battle with Magus.

I really need to take some time soon to do a play through of your version. I hope one of my favorite lines is still intact as it was changed in the DS-Steam releases. In the Middle Ages, a soldier in the beginning of the game says "Shut yer pie hole." It's stupid and out of place for the time period, but I always loved that line.

I really need to take some time soon to do a play through of your version. I hope one of my favorite lines is still intact as it was changed in the DS-Steam releases. In the Middle Ages, a soldier in the beginning of the game says "Shut yer pie hole." It's stupid and out of place for the time period, but I always loved that line.

I would very much like a patch to give Frog his dialogue from the DS localization. He has a more elevated kind of speech, but not bastardized Shakespearean.

Sorry, but I've got to draw the line somewhere. Frog isn't a bug, while Magus's name shenanigans are still a textual bug in a manner of speaking (mostly with changing Magus's name). Rewriting a whole major player character is pretty far from the scope of this project. And yes it would have to be an original rewrite instead of ripping off Slattery's version wholesale for multiple reasons (if I were to guess it'd be similar to FFVI TWUE's Cyan, but not completely the same). The only thing I did that's even close to any character rewrite is Nizbel, which only had lines right before getting killed off for good.

You can try to do it yourself if you wish; all you really need is a DS/PC script to read from, Temporal Flux, and a good amount of time for writing and testing. Dialog room shouldn't be an issue, and using TF is easier than it sounds (no really, it looks daunting but it's way easier than most out there).

I can confirm, I got FF3usME just to fix one or two pet peeves from FF6, but inspiration struck and ended up retranslating the entire game. (why I didn't release it? that's a different story) It's very simple to use these editors to tailor your own ROM. Then you can release it as an addendum I guess?

Sure, but I'll give you a quick tip about that: you'd save yourself some major headaches by releasing it with the whole patch included as opposed to just the addon patch. A little tidbit that I learned from Liberties Extended is that over updates the data can shift in a way that can make text addons go haywire.

I would also suggest using the beta as a base, if you don't mind making some last minute changes if needed. No one's alerted me to any changes I need to make to Bugfix Alone since that release so far, however. If you want to use another version, you might want to wait.June 21, 2019, 02:36:17 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)Alright, Name Liberties is done and added to the same post as the other beta patch. Next up is getting SkyDark patches done.